What provides monthly income? What provides yearly income? The manual is a little sketchy on this, and I think it's sometimes wrong, too.
In a game yesterday, I had FOUR civil wars in the span of about 150 years. I was playing China in the Fantasia scenario and owned all of eastern Asia and Australia... holy crap those were hard to handle. Is that common? The first one came when I had +2 stability, I think.
Now, in that game, I had a few provinces claim independance. I was able to totally annex the new countries that only had 1 province after I conqured them, but I couldn't do the same with the countries with more than one province... I was at 100% but the best I could do was annex the non-capitol provinces. Was I missing something? (BTW, I usually did not demand vassalization because I was sometimes able to get a casus belli against them and squish them out anyway).
Also, in that Fantasia scenario (AI set to Aggressive, difficulty to Hard), the other computer players were totally killing me on tech research! Some of them are up to Land Tech 50 and I only have 20! What gives? Am I missing something about research here? I had one of the top naval techs in the game, but it was only 20 or so as well. (big whoop)
I can upload a copy of my saved game somewhere if anyone wants to give me tips about how to play better...
I really like the game overall, but whoever thought POPUPS were a good way to present information deserves a sack beating.
What provides monthly income? What provides yearly income? The
manual is a little sketchy on this, and I think it's sometimes
wrong, too.
Monthly income is based on taxes, goods production, trade income, and gold mines. Whenever you're looking at the budget screen, that's monthly income. One thing to watch out for with the monthly budget is that you're almost certainly going to be losing mony. You can send money to the treasury to ballance the budget (or turn it to a profit), but don't do it if you can afford to lose the cash. Basicaly what you're doing is coining more money to make up the difference, and that causes inflation (you can see the current inflation rate in the budget window). I'd try and keep inflation under 5%, otherwise troops and building upgrades start getting *very* expensive. Your yearly income should be enough that even with sending no money to the treasury you won't lose so much that you run out of cash before the next yearly income comes in.
Yearly income isn't so well documented, I can't remember what all goes into it. Mostly it's chunk of yearly taxes from each province, and your merchants. If you own a province that contains a center of trade it's a big chunk, up to 60 gold for a large CoT.
In a game yesterday, I had FOUR civil wars in the span of about
150 years. I was playing China in the Fantasia scenario and
owned all of eastern Asia and Australia... holy crap those were
hard to handle. Is that common? The first one came when I had +2
stability, I think.
Most of the major countries have their little quirks built in to try and mirror history. China is one of the toughest in that just when you start to get rolling you usually get hit with some nasty rebellions like you did. China is definately not the norm as far as that goes.
Now, in that game, I had a few provinces claim independance. I
was able to totally annex the new countries that only had 1
province after I conqured them, but I couldn't do the same with
the countries with more than one province... I was at 100% but
the best I could do was annex the non-capitol provinces. Was I
missing something? (BTW, I usually did not demand vassalization
because I was sometimes able to get a casus belli against them
and squish them out anyway).
No, you're not missing anything. Unless it's done diplomaticly (meaning they like you) you can't get a country to agree to cease to exist unless they only have their capital province left. If you have 100% you can take everything else, but you'll have to wait until the next war to snatch their capital.
Also, in that Fantasia scenario (AI set to Aggressive,
difficulty to Hard), the other computer players were totally
killing me on tech research! Some of them are up to Land Tech 50
and I only have 20! What gives? Am I missing something about
research here? I had one of the top naval techs in the game, but
it was only 20 or so as well. (big whoop)
This is where things get a little frustrating as compaired to Civ 3. Europa is designed to be a historical game, so things are not always equal. The major european nations tend to have much higher tech levels than the rest of the world. You can catch up though. Once your economy really gets booming, you'll be investing a lot more money each month into tech.
I can upload a copy of my saved game somewhere if anyone wants
to give me tips about how to play better...
Just keep at it. Every scenario will get a little easier to manage than the previous one. This game definately has a lot more to grasp than the average (and unfortunately the documentation doesn't help the situation any.)
I really like the game overall, but whoever thought POPUPS were
a good way to present information deserves a sack beating.
Yeah, that definately wasn't a good design choice. However, you can turn a lot of them off. I found that at least half of them didn't contain any info I wanted to know. If you right click on a popup you can tell it what events you want to be notified of, and turn off the popups for the others.
This is where things get a little frustrating as compaired to
Civ 3. Europa is designed to be a historical game, so things are
not always equal. The major european nations tend to have much
higher tech levels than the rest of the world. You can catch up
though. Once your economy really gets booming, you'll be
investing a lot more money each month into tech.
I usually keep a steady supply of money going so I can pay for colonization, which is very expensive. But I guess I should divert more of it into tech.
Yeah, that definately wasn't a good design choice. However, you
can turn a lot of them off. I found that at least half of them
didn't contain any info I wanted to know. If you right click on
a popup you can tell it what events you want to be notified of,
and turn off the popups for the others.
I figured that out the first time I went to right click on something and I ended up right-clicking on one of about four popups that happened just as I clicked. I'm not sure on the best way to present information is (the info box at the bottom is also pathetic, as it's small, hard to read, and moves too quickly), but popups aren't it.
There are some game elements that are really nice and I think future games should use them... for example, the element of stability can turn a game from being rather mindless to a game that really forces you to think. You can't start a war every month because your populace won't like it. And for that reason, neither will the rest of the world, as their relationship with you goes down.
I think I like the exploring aspect the best. Probably for the same reason I liked KOEI's old Uncharted Waters game so much, I used to play it on my NES more than anything on my SNES.
One more question -- what's "CRT"? I keep seeing things that improve CRT, but I can't figure out what it means.
Comments
In a game yesterday, I had FOUR civil wars in the span of about 150 years. I was playing China in the Fantasia scenario and owned all of eastern Asia and Australia... holy crap those were hard to handle. Is that common? The first one came when I had +2 stability, I think.
Now, in that game, I had a few provinces claim independance. I was able to totally annex the new countries that only had 1 province after I conqured them, but I couldn't do the same with the countries with more than one province... I was at 100% but the best I could do was annex the non-capitol provinces. Was I missing something? (BTW, I usually did not demand vassalization because I was sometimes able to get a casus belli against them and squish them out anyway).
Also, in that Fantasia scenario (AI set to Aggressive, difficulty to Hard), the other computer players were totally killing me on tech research! Some of them are up to Land Tech 50 and I only have 20! What gives? Am I missing something about research here? I had one of the top naval techs in the game, but it was only 20 or so as well. (big whoop)
I can upload a copy of my saved game somewhere if anyone wants to give me tips about how to play better...
I really like the game overall, but whoever thought POPUPS were a good way to present information deserves a sack beating.
Monthly income is based on taxes, goods production, trade income, and gold mines. Whenever you're looking at the budget screen, that's monthly income. One thing to watch out for with the monthly budget is that you're almost certainly going to be losing mony. You can send money to the treasury to ballance the budget (or turn it to a profit), but don't do it if you can afford to lose the cash. Basicaly what you're doing is coining more money to make up the difference, and that causes inflation (you can see the current inflation rate in the budget window). I'd try and keep inflation under 5%, otherwise troops and building upgrades start getting *very* expensive. Your yearly income should be enough that even with sending no money to the treasury you won't lose so much that you run out of cash before the next yearly income comes in.
Yearly income isn't so well documented, I can't remember what all goes into it. Mostly it's chunk of yearly taxes from each province, and your merchants. If you own a province that contains a center of trade it's a big chunk, up to 60 gold for a large CoT.
Most of the major countries have their little quirks built in to try and mirror history. China is one of the toughest in that just when you start to get rolling you usually get hit with some nasty rebellions like you did. China is definately not the norm as far as that goes.
No, you're not missing anything. Unless it's done diplomaticly (meaning they like you) you can't get a country to agree to cease to exist unless they only have their capital province left. If you have 100% you can take everything else, but you'll have to wait until the next war to snatch their capital.
This is where things get a little frustrating as compaired to Civ 3. Europa is designed to be a historical game, so things are not always equal. The major european nations tend to have much higher tech levels than the rest of the world. You can catch up though. Once your economy really gets booming, you'll be investing a lot more money each month into tech.
Just keep at it. Every scenario will get a little easier to manage than the previous one. This game definately has a lot more to grasp than the average (and unfortunately the documentation doesn't help the situation any.)
Yeah, that definately wasn't a good design choice. However, you can turn a lot of them off. I found that at least half of them didn't contain any info I wanted to know. If you right click on a popup you can tell it what events you want to be notified of, and turn off the popups for the others.
Thanks for the answers, Mori.
I usually keep a steady supply of money going so I can pay for colonization, which is very expensive. But I guess I should divert more of it into tech.
I figured that out the first time I went to right click on something and I ended up right-clicking on one of about four popups that happened just as I clicked. I'm not sure on the best way to present information is (the info box at the bottom is also pathetic, as it's small, hard to read, and moves too quickly), but popups aren't it.
There are some game elements that are really nice and I think future games should use them... for example, the element of stability can turn a game from being rather mindless to a game that really forces you to think. You can't start a war every month because your populace won't like it. And for that reason, neither will the rest of the world, as their relationship with you goes down.
I think I like the exploring aspect the best. Probably for the same reason I liked KOEI's old Uncharted Waters game so much, I used to play it on my NES more than anything on my SNES.
One more question -- what's "CRT"? I keep seeing things that improve CRT, but I can't figure out what it means.